Developed by the team at Zenimax Online Studios, The Elder Scrolls Online merges the unmatched exploration of rich worlds that the franchise is known for with the scale and social aspects of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Players will discover an entirely new chapter of Elder Scrolls history in this ambitious world, set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm.

I fail to see how an Elder Scrolls MMO will appeal to anyone, unless you're really into TES lore. There are already plenty of fantasy MMOs on the market, some of which are free-to-play, which I highly doubt TES Online will be.

IMO the appeal of TES games is that they have huge worlds to explore. Without a monthly fee. And with mods.

Steam: [GWJ]MeatMan | "Now I know where to go if I have a hankering for testicles." –Higgledy

I fail to see how an Elder Scrolls MMO will appeal to anyone, unless you're really into TES lore. There are already plenty of fantasy MMOs on the market, some of which are free-to-play, which I highly doubt TES Online will be.

IMO the appeal of TES games is that they have huge worlds to explore. Without a monthly fee. And with mods.

I have to agree with this, I'm not seeing the big draw. It comes across as something that only exists because someone said "Hey, we've got this IP, and that IP has a big world made for it".

The upside I can see for it is that Bethesda will have to shake up the underlying technical guts underneath the game or it'll be hacked to hell and back, and hopefully give their current Gamebyro based engine the heave-ho.

The upside I can see for it is that Bethesda will have to shake up the underlying technical guts underneath the game or it'll be hacked to hell and back, and hopefully give their current Gamebyro based engine the heave-ho.

They already heaved Gambryo. Skyrim is built on the own Creation Engine, which they built in-house.

My biggest concern is the role playing element. As a single player game you can really craft and hone your experience to fit with the character you have designed in your head. I often ignore more powerful gear, just because it is not the type of item my character would use or wear. I wonder if having a bunch of players around will diminish that aspect of the game.

For example, if I play as a Wood Elf Archer and I go and hang out with a big group of Wood Elf Archers, are they all going to look distinctly different in appearance, gear, skills, powers, play style, etc. or will we all pretty much look and play like the same character?

There is no real way to know for sure, without hacking into the TESV executable, but there are textual references to Gamebryo and NetImmerse. Plus, I believe Zenimax/Beth. licensed Gamebryo for Skyrim, so, what can I say...money doesn't talk, it swears.

Gods dammit. I've been dreaming for years of them finally making an entry in the Elder Scrolls series that finally utilized all of Tamriel. But not a damn mmo. I want MY Elder Scrolls, not some watered-down version populated by the great unwashed masses.

I guess I finally found the one gaming thing that I will actually get all huffy and elitist over.

Steve Escalante was very kind to me when I was in game development so I'm going to be purchasing the game no matter what. But, like Farscry, I want a single player Elder Scrolls game that is really big. I hope it's F2P.

What I like about their new engine, is that the name encapsulates their design mantra of "Creation." One day, they might be the development house that builds a game that actually does adapt to the player and shape their experience in a substantive way, instead of just giving us the tools to do so. We are a long way off from true AI (some would disagree) that can actually create novel content and experiences for each individual player, but I feel like they are doing everything they can to try approximate that type of experience with the technology and resources they have available. That makes me happy. How that philosophy translates over to an MMO, built by another development team, will be interesting.

Farscry wrote:

Gods dammit. I've been dreaming for years of them finally making an entry in the Elder Scrolls series that finally utilized all of Tamriel. But not a damn mmo. I want MY Elder Scrolls, not some watered-down version populated by the great unwashed masses.

I guess I finally found the one gaming thing that I will actually get all huffy and elitist over. :(

I will be a Beta/Day 1 guy, but like you guys said, when I think of Skyrim I think of my Skyrim and the individual characters I crafted over hours and hours of gameplay. I want to bring Greystoke the Orc and Crow the Wood Elf into the MMO version of Skyrim and for that version to know who I am and the things I have done. I do not want to have that dividing line between the two worlds, but I know they have to put it there or come up with some deus ex machina to explain away the incongruity of a few million dragon born all of whom think they are the ones who saved the world.

As I think about the MMO, the main thing I'm most interested in now is how they frame the player-character—since there'll be thousands of them. In TES you're often The One, chosen, prophesied, ordained, and the whole world revolves around you as NPCs can't aggrandize you often enough. That condescension to the player bugs me in Skyrim; Fallout 3 better handles acknowledging the player's actions, e.g. Three Dog. In my current playthrough of Skyrim, I'm eschewing all faction quests (and powerful items) precisely to avoid all that ego-inflation, instead just role-playing (emphasis on role) as a regular adventurer contra "hero": just some dude in the wide world of Tamriel with a desire to explore and sustain himself with some dungeon-delving (a more adventurous Nordrick).

Now since there can't be a thousand Chosen Ones in Tamriel, would we all just be regular adventurers? We can't all be beings of indescribable power. And that doesn't have to be as pedestrian as it sounds either, since that's essentially EVE's world AFAIK. Although while that's immensely appealing to me, maybe it doesn't mesh as well with the expectations of a fantasy MMO's audience?

Fake edit:

heavyfeul wrote:

I do not want to have that dividing line between the two worlds, but I know they have to put it there or come up with some deus ex machina to explain away the incongruity of a few million dragon born all of whom think they are the ones who saved the world.

I fail to see how an Elder Scrolls MMO will appeal to anyone, unless you're really into TES lore. There are already plenty of fantasy MMOs on the market, some of which are free-to-play, which I highly doubt TES Online will be.

IMO the appeal of TES games is that they have huge worlds to explore. Without a monthly fee. And with mods.

A few things:
It is being developed by Matt Firor and several other developers from DAOC and WAR.
There is a quote that it will feature (focus?) 3 faction pvp.

I expect this to be more DAOC 2 than Elder Scrolls.
I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. Elder Scrolls has the better brand recognition and DAOC is long overdue for a sequel. WAR had a lot of promise that still is being squandered to this day.

IMO it is both good and bad that it isn't Bethesda developing this. I don't think Bethesda is good at anything other than making huge worlds that are glitchy and boring without community mods. The bad is that it looks like they are going to shoehorn Elder Scrolls into 3 faction pvp? Expect lots of liberties.

I hope they go the route of the new Neverwinter and release community content generation tools at launch or shortly after.